Yesterday there has been an article in the London Times suggesting a different interpretation of what went on last Friday. There may have been the possibility that Trump and Vance were very much interested in signing that deal, but that they were kind of doing some big chess player moves to put the US into the position of being a neutral arbiter. According to that position, the reason Trump has been making these strange moves that make the US look like they’re in Putin’s camp has actually been to make the US look neutral so that they can talk to Russia as a neutral arbiter. And Zelensky allegedly didn’t get that and endangered the whole setup of the US-Russia play.
Apparently, the microphones and the seats and the tables and the podiums and stuff were already set up for signing. So had Zelensky agreed, there would have been that mineral deal. The Americans would have sent people there to monitor the minerals and thus discouraging Putin from coming in, and that would have been the security guarantee.
Okay, that sounds interesting, but there are problems with that. And this is what Zelensky tried to point out. There is a logical reason why the US can’t be the best negotiator for Ukraine, and that is because the US and Europe are the real target for Putin. Putin is not only interested in Ukraine. Putin is interested in destroying the West as it is, which means Europe and the United States.
Ukraine holds some interest to Russia historically and presently. I’m not going to deny that, but there’s this wider game that Putin wants to play in creating a Russian-dominated area ranging from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Putin, Lavrov, and his propaganda cronies have said this time and again. Putin has put himself up as kind of the anti-West or as the traditional West. He claims to be pro-traditional values, pro-church, and anti-woke, whatever “woke” means. He has legalized wife beating. He has made being any letter of LGBTQ illegal. He has not done anything to really promote any modern lifestyle for people. His cities are falling apart, the villages have already fallen apart, and so on.
He’s killing his own people. He’s killing Russian speakers in Ukraine. None of this makes any sense if you see him as part of anything approaching a functioning state model. He’s not religious—he pretends to be. He’s KGB. Even Patriarch Kirill isn’t religious—he’s KGB. And much has been made of Zelensky< banning that one Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. That wasn’t a church—that was a propaganda outfit run by the Russians posturing as being the church. You have the Orthodox Russian Church being weaponized right now as a tool for Putin. That’s what’s going on.
Putin has supported every neo-Nazi party in Europe. We know that he’s been providing funding to several outfits. He’s also been behind every rift that we have in our society being widened. So he’s playing a brilliant propaganda game, and that affects all of Europe and the United States. We cannot delude ourselves in thinking that this is about Ukraine only.
So if we pretend as the United States that we could be neutral in this, we can’t, because we are part of the target. That is why such a brilliant plan can’t work. And the Russians with their current roster of personnel are very good at lying to us about that.
The other problem here is that the United States is overestimating its strength. The United States relies on Europe. It relies on Europe buying American weapons. It also, frankly, relies on Europe not being too armed because it hasn’t gone that well in the past when Europe was heavily armed. So that’s a dangerous game to play.
The other problem is a perception problem. Let’s assume that Trump and his people believe they can play this game to success. Trump is a wrestling promoter, and he worked for many years as a person that has this overblown persona that gets things done through exaggeration, hyping things, strategic lying, distortion of the truth, whatever you want to call it. It’s all strategy for him. What you see with him is the ultimate cynical politician, and he probably believes that everybody knows that this is how politics works. It may well be, but that’s not the perception that people want to have, and that’s not the perception that people do have.
See, if you buy in to this idea that Trump is playing this madman persona, that he is following this kind of madman theory of politics, the danger with that model is the opponent may not believe it and test you, and you can’t deliver. But the other danger is your allies and your own people may start to believe it.
Is Trump as crazy as people think he is? I don’t know. I don’t want to say he is. I don’t want to say he isn’t because I don’t know him. All I can talk about is the perception and the effectiveness of the strategy. And the perception is horrifying, and the effectiveness of this strategy will tend towards zero eventually. You can’t play that role consistently and not have people wonder whether it’s a role or reality.
I’ve heard people compare Trump to Hitler. I don’t know whether that’s true. I don’t think it’s true, but that doesn’t matter. The perception is out there. There are people who think he is willingly working towards World War III. Well, frankly, we’re kind of in World War III already, but this is how it looks: Russia, Iran, China allied against us, trying to destabilize us, trying to destroy the way our societies work.
Brexit was a prime case. It worked and it didn’t work. Now we have the destruction of the American administrative state. We have the destruction, maybe, of parts of the separation of powers and checks and balances, and the attempt, maybe, at a transformation of the United States into something more resembling Russia. That certainly is the Russian plan. That’s why they’ve supported parties all over the world that follow that model. They’ve either scared them or promoted corruption or definitely fed into social media narratives to make us all doubt the nature of our reality.
And I know people whose perception of reality has been completely warped to believe that Ukraine is at fault, that Russia is just a victim, and they believe all the narratives about, you know, suppression of Russians and stuff like that. Well, if the Russians in Ukraine were so suppressed, why is Putin killing them? That doesn’t make any sense, does it?
Globally, the perception of the United States is even more in danger, and here is where the real damage lies. The economic model of the United States only works because the US has been seen as a less than zero-sum player historically. It’s the US military holding open the seas and the global trade. It’s the US supporting global institutions that make our economic system work. All of this is in danger by this style of politics.
So whether or not you support Trump, you ask yourself the question: do you really think we don’t need the rest of the planet in our corner, or as much of them as possible? Do you really think that letting Ukraine be defeated or be forced into a horrible peace deal that rewards Russia would be a good long-term play? I don’t think so.
So if there is a brilliant plan behind all of this, it’s not working. It’s not that brilliant. It’s going to self-sabotage. So we need to return to politics as a little bit more as it used to be. Zelenskyy and Trump need to talk, and Russia needs to be defeated because the current Russian government has been a consistent disruptor of any attempt at creating peace and prosperity around the globe. And that is not in the American interest.
Ceterum censeo Ucrainam esse defendam. Слава Україні!
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
Erratic Attempts 